Profile: Chris Tarrant: Christopher
John Tarrant, or 'CT' to his friends, is a 6ft 2" Libran who grew up with a
nickname of 'Cuthbert'. His first job was driving lorries but held an
ambition of being the captain of England's national football and cricket teams.
His first involvement in the media business took him to the Central Office Of
Information where he was a film researcher for their Overseas Unit, he used to
be a teacher in the East End of London, but perhaps his biggest break was when
ATV asked him to present a Saturday morning TV show called 'TISWAS' (Today Is
Saturday, Watch And Smile) in 1974. At the end of TISWAS' run, the
show's staff moved to a late night alternative adults version called 'OVER THE
TOP' or 'OTT', but this ground-breaking show, whilst perhaps being socially
acceptable today, certainly wasn't then and it ended after only a couple of
series under Central Television's control.

In 1984, he joined 95.8 Capital FM -
but the first time he put a record on the turntable at the station, he played
the 'B' side by mistake. He has also played a Monty Python track with the
'F' word at the end of it - without realising! He started on the Breakfast
Show in 1987. He's won the Gold Award for 'Best On-Air Personality' at the
International Radio Festival in New York, and 'Radio Personality of the Year'
and 'Best Breakfast Show' at the Sony Radio Awards. His shows have
aired from places as far and wide as Australia, Lapland, New York and
Kenya.

During the course of his career, his
TV work has snowballed. First he followed on in the footsteps of Clive
James & Keith Floyd to present 'Tarrant On TV', which he still presents
today. He is also known for the highly unusual game show, aired on ITV, called
'Man O Man' in which a studio full of men were gradually whittled down to just
one, with hostesses shoving the rejected ones into a pool of cold water.

But perhaps most noticeably in 1997,
Celador Productions created a pilot of a new TV game show called 'Who Wants To
Be A Millionaire?'. The show's format needed some major tweaks to stop it
being just another game show and, with the tweaks complete, in 1998, the show
burst onto the screens of ITV with a top prize of a cool £1million. Over
£40million has been awarded in prize money to date, and both the show and Chris
himself have picked up many awards on a yearly basis since, whilst the show
continues to be shown around the world in many languages with exactly the same
format. The UK version has the biggest prize of them all due to exchange
rates. The show, which previously aired every night, then every other
night can now be seen on ITV1, Saturday afternoons (where the previous
Saturday's show is repeated) and then again with the next show Saturday evening.
2003 saw the end of yet another run of the Saturday night show, with, instead a
highlights show airing Monday to Friday at 5:30 from Monday 6th June 2003 -
Friday 22nd August, looking back at memorable
moments in the show from it's first four series and some brief interviews with
some of the key contestants.

Chris' most distinguishing marks are scars around his left ankle where he had a
metal plate inserted after breaking his leg. He is married - 'at least
he was when he left the house this morning' and has six children.
He ranks his DJ-ing style as '...chaotic and loud' and says that he has
an ideal face for radio! Chris says the three words that best describe him
are '...tall, gangling and loud...', he is most likely to say '...let's
get out of this hell hole' and least likely to say '...oh great! There
goes my alarm clock....' His worst mistake is calling his radio
station 'Crapital Radio' many years ago! He is a keen
fisherman but also likes cricket and football, and musically, he's a big fan of
Status Quo. He hopes to be remembered for '...making people smile at
un-godly hour of the morning when smiling was probably the last thing on their
mind.' Finally, if Chris wasn't Chris, he'd be Robert De Niro.

Whereabouts: For some considerable time now, it has been common knowledge
that Chris Tarrant - no longer the spring chicken that he was in the TISWAS days
- was expressing a wish to leave 95.8 Caapital FM's breakfast show. Chris,
host of 'Tarrant on TV' and 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' has been at Capital
on breakfast for many years. A Millionaire documentary screened on ITV2
over recent years showed Chris' punishing schedule of recording 'Millionaire',
finishing late, getting two to three hours sleep and getting up to present his
radio show, only to leave to continue the same circle the following day.
As recently as September 2002, Chris appeared on 'The Frank Skinner Show'
stating it was time to ease off a little and that he had been doing the show for
some time. However, with the reduced filming and airing schedule of
'Millionaire' which must've helped, Capital Radio Group Chief Exec David
Mansfield announced that a number of ideas had been discussed with Chris and
both were delighted that he would launch the station's new Breakfast show in
January 2003. In stark contrast to recent statements made by the man
himself on Frank's show, speaking at the time, Chris said 'I just
can't help it, radio is in my blood and so is Capital. I'm sorry to disappoint
the competition, but I am not ready to hang up the Capital headphones yet!'

In September 2003, the rumour mill
fired back into life again, and AIRCHECK Radio News reported that Capital had
made several moves to take Jonathan Ross away from the Sony Award winning
BBC Radio 2
Saturday Morning Show, a slot Ross took control of when Steve
Wright moved to
weekday afternoons in place of Ed
Stewart in 1998/1999. It seemed
Capital were once again attempting to shoe-horn Jonathan out of the slot which
has achieved some pretty healthy ratings for the BBC RAJAR figure-topping
national station. Ross is contracted to the BBC until July 2004 and
this contract is not believed to be broken by either agent or presenter, but his
agent didn't rule out a move for his star. Addison Cresswell, said that
Capital '...have approached me on three or four occasions. There is no hiding
the fact Chris
Tarrant is going at Christmas. They are bound to be sniffing
around the top talent and Jonathan has got one of the highest rating shows. Plus
Chris is a big fan of Jonathan.'

RAJAR figures from the time stem from a
13-week listening period. Chris was off for nine of those thirteen weeks.
The RAJAR/Ipsos-RSL figures for the first three months of 2003 showed Capital
FM's audience share fell from 8.8% to 8.1%.

At the same time, internet discussion boards and
industry gossip fired up a debate on who would replace Jonathan Ross if
he left Radio 2...that's another matter. However, it's a
completely irrelevant matter now, as, it's been confirmed that, after 17 years,
Tarrant is to hand over the 95.8 Capital FM Breakfast Show to Johnny
Vaughan who has signed a three year deal, from Spring 2003 to present the
show which hits around 1,750,000 people each morning. The deal is thought
to be worth around £5m - £6m. The announcement was made to listeners,
staff and the stock market on Tuesday 30th September 2003 - the change is the
second phase of a general station shake-up. Capital's MD, Keith Pringle
said "I'm delighted Johnny will be joining the
team at 95.8 Capital FM to head up the UK's most prestigious breakfast
show. Johnny has perfect credentials for the job; he's funny and spontaneous,
down to earth and most importantly a real London guy who fits in perfectly with
how our listeners want to be. Johnny will be joining our team in Spring
2004, taking over from Chris Tarrant who has clocked up an outstanding 17 years
of brilliant service."

Johnny Vaughan said: "To be asked to fill CT's big headphones,
and trust me they are big headphones, is an honour and I am thrilled to take on
this challenge. To me London is the greatest city in the world and Capital
the only radio station! I'm used to early mornings so getting up won't be a
problem - my only hope is that I look as good as Chris does in 15 years
time."

Chris
Tarrant said: "I
love Capital. It's the only station I've ever worked for and I'll miss the
great friends I've made here. I think Johnny is a great choice as my successor
and he'll bring a lot to the show. The Big Breakfast showed that he's vibrant,
lively, funny and exciting in the mornings and I'm sure he can bring all this to
the Capital Breakfast Show. I think he's a great replacement and I wish him all
the best. However, I'm now off to enjoy life without the early starts and
I won't miss the alarm going off every morning."